Some more on Australia Post...

My recent post on Australia Post certainly struck a chord with many readers...both here in Australia and overseas. It seems like many of us suffer poor service and pay high rates for it at that! And some of us have stories of mail going astray.
Not long after I published that post, Vireya sent me a link to a news service with an article about Australia Post. A report on salaries of AP Executives had been released publically despite opposition by AP hierarchy.

What a coincidence that I should write a post about AP ( and it's price hikes and poor service) at about the same time that details of the salary of the CEO of AP should have been made public.

Yep! The CEO receives a salary of $4.4 million plus a bonus of $1.2 million. He receives 10 times the salary of our Prime Minister and 119 times the salary of the postal workers...except those 5 executives of AP who receive $1.8 p/a. So there you go...and they said that AP is making losses and prices had to go up????

NannaChel commented that she could remember 2 postal deliveries per day Monday to Friday and one on Saturdays. And I can remember that too...but it seems so long ago. After reading Chel's comment I remembered an item that had belonged to DH's mother. I guess it's a family heirloom...and at present, DH is the 'keeper' of my MiL's treasures.

It is a postcard...

It is dated 1909...

The postcard was sent from Brisbane city to the suburb of Kangaroo Point...not a great distance, but then again in 1909 Brisbane wasn't very big and roads weren't the best.

The postcard was written by DH's great aunt, who at 16 years old worked in the city. She wrote the message to her mother in the morning and the card was delivered in the afternoon of the same day. yep! Same day! Great Aunt Ethel wanted to let her mother know that if she wasn't home by 8pm, she had gone to see a play.

Now in light of the present day era of phones, mobile phones and emails it may not sound impressive, but to me it was amazing!
Just a few more details about that 1909 postcard...the photo on the front is of the Toowoomba Hospital. Even though after Federation in 1901 and the setting up of the Post Master General's department to oversee postal and telegraph services, the stamp on the postcard is issued by the Queensland government. It wasn't until 1911 that the federal government issued stamps. In 1911, Aussies could send a letter anywhere in Australia for 1 penny.
So there we have a bit of history.

The Graveyard Safari ??

This post will certainly be a little different to the norm, to say the least!
During the previous fortnight we've visited a few cemeteries. The reason? Taking DH's cousin to visit family graves. This took us to not only Brisbane suburbs, but also to 3 cemeteries in the Taree district. Taree is a town in New South Wales and a 7 hour drive from Brisbane. So...

Visiting Grandmother Johanna's grave at Lutwyche Cemetery here in Brisbane...

Visiting Great Aunt Annie's grave at Dutton Park Cemetery in South Brisbane. Remember, until 2011, Adrienne had believed Annie to be her maternal grandmother. 

Despite having the numbers and section of the Dutton Park Cemetery for where the Mohr great grandparents were buried, we were unable to find their graves. The proximity to the Brisbane River of these graves led us to speculate that the headstones were washed away or damaged irreparably in the 1974 or 2011 floods. Other cousins had recalled that these graves did have headstones when they visited with their parents in the 1950s. By checking marked graves using the BCC's index we were able to isolate an area where we believed the family graves were...

 

The next cemeteries we visited were in the Taree area. The lady on the Information Desk at the Taree Council had already been very helpful via email and phone calls before we had even left Brisbane. Nothing was too much trouble and we left the building with maps etc, provided by Kimm.

The Dawson River Cemetery was in such a pretty spot! 

Some relatives' graves were found but as Billy Lindore's grave is listed as unmarked, we could only guess where his resting place would be.

Adrienne remembered visiting this cemetery in 1960 with her mother and a cousin of her mother's. ...the cousin knew where the unmarked grave of Billy Lindore was and used a large tree as a land mark.  The tree in the next photo looked familiar to Adrienne...but it was a long time ago!

Next stop was Wingham cemetery...and better luck here! 

We had expected unmarked graves for this family, judging by the council records,  but someone has purchased headstones fairly recently.

Last Cemetery for the day was the Redbank Cemetery which had several very old graves as well as some more recent ones.

Right up the back of Redbank Cemetery was an isolated section...this was the aboriginal section. I personally found this very confronting but I guess it was a product of its time...rather sad though. 

In this cemetery Adrienne did find ancestors' graves...the Bugg family, who apparently had links via marriage to the bushranger known as Thunderbolt.
Checking out these 3 graveyards had taken most of the day, but it was good to have achieved such good results for Adrienne. She will upload photos of the graves and /or headstones in the Family Tree on Ancestry.com.

DNA...

Last December, I decided to order a DNA test through Ancestry.com.au. So when the kit arrived I read all the instructions and duly filled the vial with saliva up to the mark. Then the top was screwed on to the vial thus releasing a reagent. 

Then the sample was packaged up and posted. The wait for results is about 6 weeks...

so why was I bothering to do this test? Well probably just because I could! Lol. Maybe just a bit of curiosity of where my 'roots' are?? I'd been brought up to believe that my mother's side through my grandmother, 'were Irish to their bootstraps!' So I expected to see that in my Ethnicity. 

Now my dad was from Sicily, which has a long history of being influenced by those who invaded the island...from Carthage and also the Etruscans played a large role in the history. And then there were the Arab traders...so I was interested to see if what I'd learned in history at school would be reflected in my DNA...and it was; that tiny bit of North African! 

I was surprised to find that I have a relatively small percentage of Irish...much more Great Britain than I expected. 

As well as giving me details of my Ethnicity, Ancestry also gave me a list of those who shared my DNA...( the list is now up to 28)

I'd already traced back a number of generations on my mother's side but had a pitiful amount of detail about my father, so I looked through the list of DNA matches and checked out names that looked Italian. I sent a few messages via Ancestry...and amazingly I found some cousins in Sydney, whom I'd had no knowledge of...the family ( 7 cousins plus their late mother) in the main photo of this collage. 

They are the family of my late cousin, my dad's nephew; he and his wife are in the small photo on the top right. My new found cousins and I started sharing old family photos which has been absolutely wonderful. Ann, the wife of my cousin Frank ( both pictured in the small photo, lower right), is absolutely brilliant at trawling though the Trove resources ( old newspapers) and has found articles about my dad. 

So all this sharing of information, spurred me then to reconnect with other branches of my father's family...cousins I 'd had little contact with for many, many years. One cousin from North Queensland, was going to Sydney and organised to meet one of our 'new' cousins and his wife while she was there...small photo at top left. This cousin has given us a lot of help translating what is written ( in Italian) on the back of old photos.

The other cousin I contacted is in the small photo on the lower left hand side of the collage. She has given us lots of details about our family...and photos too. Carmela was able to tell me about 2 brothers of my father's whom I didn't know even existed! So 4 branches of my dad's family are back in contact again...all hoping to fill in as many gaps in our Family Trees as we can. 

And today DH and I flew to Sydney...

We will be doing lots of 'touristy stuff' but the main reason for the trip is to meet up with some of my cousins. And next Saturday we are meeting up and I'm really looking forward to it.

( I took advantage of a 'special' offered by Ancestry and paid $120 plus $29 P&H. Specials are offered on a regular basis. If you check out DNA testing articles etc online, you would find a number of articles saying that the tests available to the general public are meaningless and useless, but in my case, the results have been wonderful. 

Of course the effectiveness of the results depends on how many people have done the test. I was lucky that a fairly close relative ( 2nd cousin) had taken the test. My other matches are nowhere near that close; those being suggested are 4-8th cousins, so our common ancestors are a fair way back) 

Follow up on my previous post...

In my last post I wrote about my 'philosophical disagreement'  with the writer Marie Kondo on the subject of old photos and their value. I loved reading all the comments that readers posted. Now I may scan all those old photos and make digital albums, but I still keep those original photos. But my relatives, no matter where they live, are able to copy photos from those Facebook albums at any time. I've seen a few of my photos uploaded to family trees ( other branches of my tree) on Ancestry.com.au, so even fifth or sixth cousins can access pics of my great grandparents and numerous other relatives.

 

The portable scanner that DH bought me last year piqued the interest of a number of readers. Unfortunately, at the moment, the Kogan website does not appear to have any for sale. A quick Google showed that scanners similar to mine are certainly available, but the ones I checked out seem to be available from Amazon. Buying from Amazon tends to be an expensive enterprise for Aussies due to the high costs of shipping. My scanner slides over the photo or document; it's not fed through. The images are then uploaded via cable to a PC. If anyone does find a source of these portable scanners, I'd love to hear from you!

So yesterday I met up with one of my cousins whom I have not seen for 52 years...yep, you read that correctly, 52 years! Her mum was my dad's niece and for various reasons, my mum and I lost touch with many of dad's relatives after he died. Carmela and I met to mainly talk 'family tree'. Recently I have renewed efforts to fill in gaps about my father's family. It's not an easy task. This year though, I've had some help but I'll tell you about that in another post.

1963 my family went to my cousin's wedding...and yesterday I took a photo of this lovely couple! 

Yesterday I showed my cousin those old photos that had belonged to my father. She positively identified one person; a little boy who was another of my dad's nephews. But most importantly, Carmela told me that there is another of my father's nieces who is still alive and is living in Sicily; her late mother's sister. And this lady is spritely and has all her faculties. So the family plan is for this aunt to see my photos...soon!

I scanned a few photos and took photos of ones that were in frames...this is a special one!

  It's my dad's sister and her husband...Zia (Aunty) Carmela. 

And my dad's niece Lucy at 18 years...

  (Lucy is the mother of my cousin Carmela)

I have always thought that my dad only had one brother. I found out yesterday that there were 4 boys in the family, but my cousin could only remember the name of one...so that's another mystery for 'our team' to uncover. 

My cousin's eldest doesn't really like the photo I took of her parents, so she sent me her favorite pic of her parents...

Lovely, welcoming people to a cousin (me) who went off the radar for all those years! 

Old Photos; M Goodwin vs M Kondo!

In that previous post where I wrote about Marie Kondo's book, I mentioned that one of the categories used by the author for tidying/decluttering was 'Komono' which means miscellaneous. And part of a chapter is devoted to Photos. 

As expected, Kondo iterates that you must look at each one of the photos you have and '...you will be surprised at how clearly you can tell the difference between those that touch your heart and those that don't.' p119 And of course only keep the ones that 'spark joy'. 

According to Kondo, 'The meaning of a photo lies in the excitement and joy you feel when taking it'. She continued on to say that in many cases, the prints developed afterward have already outlived their purpose. Hmmm...she would be in a state of constant apoplexy if she met me!!!

You see I have not only my own photos but I also treasure photos that were in my dad's drawer. Dad kept them in an old plywood strawberry box/punnet. In most cases I didn't have a clue who was in the photos, but I've hung on to them all these years since he died in 1967. 

With the advent of Facebook, I've made albums of old family photos of both my parents which can then be accessed by not only my generation, but the next one down.

The first screen shot is part of the Facebook album of my mum's family...my Aussie cousins had never seen some of the photos of our Nanna that I had...they were rapt. My children and my nieces and nephew had never seen most of them either.

My dad's old photos...

Thanks to having these photos in FB albums (I have some in my Box account too), I now know the identity of some of the people in these photos. Despite the photos being several decades old, some of my Aussie/Italian cousins have recognised faces...it was so exciting. 

And another exciting thing was that my collection of old photos meant that some of my cousins saw a photo of their great grandfather for the first time! And the same cousins identified a photo of a baby as their much loved uncle.  What a thrill for them and a thrill for me as I knew him as an adult. And even my cousin in FNQ who hasn't a Facebook account could access the albums via a share link I could send her. This cousin can speak and read, not only Italian, but also the Sicilian dialect of the region where my dad came from, so she could read the scans of the writing on the backs of photos.

Now back to Ms Kondo and her opinions. She claims that 'unexciting photos of scenery that you can't place belong in the garbage'. Well that could be true but may be she doesn't know about Facebook sites like Vintage Queensland and Old Brisbane Album where people post old photos of scenery. There seems to be always some reader who can pinpoint exactly where the photo was taken...the power of social media! And then those 'unexciting' photos of  scenery become very exciting! Well in my opinion anyway!!! Lol

Tomorrow I'm meeting up with a cousin I haven't seen since her wedding in 1963. With a bit of 'detective work' and googling I've found her again and we're going to talk family and look at photos. (Carmela kept all her parents photos too!) 

A few years ago DH bought me this little gadget and it's coming with me tomorrow...batteries have been changed so it's all systems go!

Some more cousins for Adrienne...

Last year I wrote about meeting Adrienne, a long lost relative of DH's who lived in Huntington Beach.

The 3 of us had a lovely lunch at Laguna Beach  March 8, 2011

Neither of them knew of the other's existence up until a few years ago. On our US trip last year, our first stop after landing at LAX was Santa Monica. An elderly cousin of DH's mother lived there and we planned to visit her. Sadly she died, aged 97, the month before we arrived . So our plans were to change somewhat.

Thelma was an Aussie but had become a US war bride, so she ended up living longer in the US than she had in Australia. Thelma had one daughter (Adrienne), and catching up with her had also been on our itinerary. Following her mother's death, Adrienne was to get a few surprises as secrets from long ago were gradually revealed.

Thelma at her daughter's home, with the dogs

When Thelma's birth certificate was obtained it showed that the woman that Adrienne believed to be her grandmother was actually her great aunt or her mother's aunt. Thelma's  biological mother (Johanna) was actually her adoptive mother's (Anna) sister. Johanna had given birth out of wedlock. Oh dear we are talking about the early years of the 20th century. Now DH's mother was very close to Johanna who died in 1975 and the family often visited Aunty Josie as she was called. So Adrienne was so excited to be able to speak to someone (DH) who had known her 'real' grandma. But it gets better...

Thelma is the flowergirl in this wedding photo of DH's grandparents

On Monday I got a call from Ann, who told me she was DH's second cousin. Ann hadn't seen DH since he was a little boy. She was 'doing' her family tree  and needed some help with DH's mother's family. She sounded so excited on the phone that she ended up coming over to see me. (DH was at golf) She'd heard a rumour that her nan had had a baby out of wedlock...did I know anything about it? Her nan was Johanna/Aunty Josie. I said yes it's true and though this woman is now deceased, her daughter is living in the US...would you like her email? 

A photo of Johanna in her later years. I had found this photo on Ancestry.com.au

To cut a long story short, I copied old family photos for her, she went off to ring her sisters and to send an email to Adrienne introducing herself. Adrienne was absolutely thrilled!  You see Ann , her siblings and Adrienne share the same grandmother, Johanna. Johanna spent her latter years living with one of her sons and his young family...this son just happened to be Ann's father. So Ann and her 7 siblings have so many memories to share with their newfound cousin. And of course, DH is renewing the ties with his cousins after so many years. As Ann makes more and more phone calls to siblings and other cousins, we are all gradually getting more old photos, documents and stories for our family histories. And it feels great :-)

Cousins! Glenda, sisters Patsy (Glenda's mother) and Ann with DH

An addiction...

When I retired last year one of my 'plans' was to do something about the large collection of photos. I needed to sort them and I needed to organise them in various ways, especially using digital storage technology. I wanted to find old photos and share them with my children, my brother and his children as well as the few other relatives (cousins that I know of). For about 3 weeks now I've been working on and off on this project. I made an album on Facebook that most of those family members can access and they can also copy and save from this album. It's a WIP, (Work in Progress); as I find photos, I add them to this folder with captions. And then I started wondering about the generation back from my mother...didn't have many photos of these people.

One thing led to another...I started putting some family tree information that a friend did for me about 3 years ago, on to a family tree in Ancestry.com.au . She had used the 'Digger CD sets'. My mother had spoken very little about her family so I didn't know who my great grandparents names were until my friend gave them to me. I didn't know Pa's siblings but did know of 2 of Nanna's sisters. I wanted to know more...I tried the free use of Ancestry...hmmm not very good. Then I paid for 10 views of documents...$10.95. Still not great...you couldn't access people who shared the same forebears. I agonised...I asked for advice from my friends on Facebook...should I pay for a 'proper' subscription to Ancestry.com.au???? There was a 25% discount if a sub was bought before midnight January 16...I 'bit the bullet' and paid up!!

Within 24 hours I had found a cousin I didn't know I had. She was so happy to share family information from her side of the family. She remembered her father talking about my mother but didn't know that I even existed. Then T started going through family photos and steadily emailed them to me over 2 days...absolutely amazing these photos were! In this post I'll feature my nanna and  a selection of the photos I have of her:-

My mother had this photo of my nan when she was a young lady; this is the original photo. As a gift to my mother I had this restored years after I started working. The restoration cost nearly $200 !

My aunt gave me this photo of nanna in 1973 when I visited her.

My nanna was in her 50s I think in this one

I didn't meet my nanna until 1973. this is a photo I took of her then. She died the next year.

So that was a cross section of photos that my family had of my grandmother. Not many really...Then I got some more from cousin T.

My nanna as a girl with her 4 sisters. (second on the right)

We wondered whether this was a wedding photo?

Nanna standing in the middle, Pa seated in front of her. We think that's her father on the left and the women are sisters.

So while everyone has  been going about their daily lives, I have been feverishly looking up census and electoral rolls, birth, deaths and marriage indexes and finding big families who are my ancestors...and this is just the Australian/UK side of the family. T has sent me lots more photos but these are just of my grandma. But I'm going to add one more photo to this post...my long-lost cousin T and her siblings...just like nanna's family, 5 girls!

Cousin T is second from the left :-)

January 4...

Today I went to the funeral of a former colleague, George. He was the teaching deputy at the school that was my first posting and seemed quite old! lol Of course he was younger then, than I am now and I'm certainly not old...lol! He was 91 when he died on the last day of 2011 and had obviously enjoyed his retirement years. I have many memories of George but one particular one I shared with his widow today. Dot used to pack the most magnificent lunches for him...all of us in the staff room were quite envious of those lunches!

January 4 has particular meaning for me; it is the anniversary of my father's death. He died in 1967 which is a while ago now. I always felt that I didn't really know my father that well because up to the age of 15 (when he died) I had never really talked to him at great length about his early life. Those missed opportunities over those 15 years to talk about him, have occasionally plagued me over the years. I wrote about my dad's final illness in this post.  (Sorry I always seem to be linking back to that same post, but I guess so much happened in that decade )   Let's fast forward to January 2008...

DH had had to go to Canberra (the national capital) for work and because I was working .8 again that year, I joined him on the Thursday night. DH suggested that on the Friday, while he worked, that I should go to the National Archives and see if I could find some records of my dad's migration to Australia. I was a bit hesitant as I felt that I had little detail to give them to start the search. However on Friday morning I fronted up to the enquiry desk at the NAA building. The lady behind the desk was so helpful and encouraging...she said I would probably be surprised at how much I did know. I said that I think he was 16 when he arrived so I thought he may have arrived in 1925 but I had no idea of the ship or which port.

Her fingers seemed to fly over the keyboard and within a matter of minutes she had found my dad and told me he had disembarked in Brisbane in March 1925 and the ship was the Regina D'Italia. I just stared at her in amazement...and then burst into tears because of the emotion of the moment! The archivist then took me to the microfiche 'room' and hepled me load the machine and then find my dad's name on the ship's manifest. She then said that the details on the other file showed there was another document available which I could order as it wasn't scanned and put into the public domain at that time. I organised for that document to be sent to me, not having a clue what it would be.

My dad and his brother

The cane has been cut! Dad is third from the left

The boys have got the knives ready to cut; dad is third from the right

It arrived 3 weeks later and boy! wasn't it worth the wait! It was a scanned copy of my dad's temporary passport. I'd had some lessons in Italian but I needed my SIL Mary, to help me read some of it. She was able to decipher that dad, as a minor, was travelling with a married couple. He boarded the ship in Genoa, so he would have had to get to that northern city from his home in Catania province in Sicily...and then travelled to the other end of the world. What an adventure for one so young and without any English!

My dad came to join his older brother who was already in Australia cutting cane in the Innisfail district of Queensland. My dad used to tell the story that when he arrived he was too young to join the canecutting gangs so my uncle and his mates 'hid' him in their barracks' accomodation and he did the cleaning etc to earn his keep. Then when he was 17 he started cutting cane. His stories used to make it sound such fun...but as I got older and read about those days, I realised that it was a hard life and immigrants also ran the gauntlet of racial intolerance as well. But I guess my dad wasn't afraid of hard work and he did seem to enjoy his years in the cane districts.

Dad on the right; note the swimsuits! The building in the background is the 'castle' in Paronella park in Nth Qld circa 1930s

Dad and his first wife Vera

Dad in his early 40s when I was born